Radio Boys Cronies eBook

“I reckon you fellers is right,” said
Mr. Hooper, “but I don’t know anything
about it. I quit school when I was eleven, but
that ain’t sayin’ I don’t miss it.
If I had an eddication now, like you lads is goin’
to git, er like the Perfesser has, I’d give more’n
half what I own. Boys that think they’re
smart to quit school an’ go to work is natchal
fools. A feller may git along an’ make money,
but he’d make a heap more an’ be a heap
happier, ’long of everything else, if he’d
got a schoolin’. An’ any boy that’s
got real sand in his gizzard can buckle down to books
an’ get a schoolin’, even if he don’t
like it. What I’m a learnin’ nowadays
makes me know that a feller can make any old study
int’restin’ if he jes’ sets down
an’ looks at it the right way.”

“That’s what Gus and I think. There
are studies we don’t like very much, but we
can make ourselves like them for we’ve got to
know a lot about them.”

“Grammar, for instance,” said Gus.

“Sure. It is tiresome stuff, learning a
lot of rules that work only half. But if a fellow
is going to be anybody and wants to stand in with
people, he’s got to know how to talk correctly
and write, too.” Bill’s logic was
sound.

“Daddy should have had a drilling in grammar,”
commented Grace, laughing.

“Oh, you!” blurted Skeets. “Mr.
Hooper can talk so that people understand him—­and
when you do talk,” she turned to the old
gentleman, “I notice folks are glad to listen,
and so is Grace.”

“But, my dear,” protested the subject
of criticism, “they’d listen better an’
grin less if I didn’t sling words about like
one o’ these here Eye-talians shovelin’
dirt.”

“You just keep a-shovelin’, Mr. Hooper,
your own way,” said Bill, “and if we catch
anybody even daring to grin at you, why, I’ll
have Gus land on them with his famous grapple!”

Mr. Hooper threw back his coat, thrust his thumbs
into the armholes of his big, white vest and swelled
out his chest.

“Now, listen to that! An’ this from
a lad who ain’t got a thing to expect from me
an’ ain’t had as much as he’s a-givin’
me, either—­an’ knows it. But
that’s nothin’ else but Simon pure frien’ship,
I take it. An’ Gus, here, him an’
Bill, they think about alike; eh, Gus?” Gus
nodded and the old gentleman continued, addressing
his remarks to his daughter and Skeets:

“Now, if I know anything at all about anything
at all I know what I’m goin’ to do.
I ain’t got no eddication, but that ain’t
goin’ to keep me from seein’ some others
git it. You Gracie, fer one, an’ you, too,
Skeeter, if your old daddy’ll let you come an’
go to school with Gracie. But that ain’t
all; if you lads kin git ol’ Eddy’s son
out o’ the air on this contraption you’re
makin’ an’ hear him talk fer sure, I’m
goin’ to see to it that you kin git all the
tec—­tec—­what you call it?—­eddication
there is goin’ an’ I’m goin’
to put Perfesser Gray wise on that, too, soon’s
he comes back. No—­don’t you say
a word now. I know what I’m a-doin’.”
With that the old gentleman turned and marched out
of the shop. But at the bottom of the garage steps
he called back: